Art You Can Wear
Ludovica de’ Medici was born in Siena, Tuscany, into a family whose 16th‑century estate overlooks rolling vineyards and cypress groves. Raised amidst Renaissance art, she felt a mysterious pull toward the East – her grandmother’s collection of ancient Silk Road embroidery fragments became her most treasured childhood memories.
At 18, she entered the Politecnico di Milano School of Design, graduating with honors in Fashion Design at 23. She joined Armani as a junior designer, quickly gaining recognition for her instinctive feel for tailoring and fabrics. But when a four‑year relationship broke off just before their engagement, she resigned and set off alone on a journey “to find color and herself.”
She started in Istanbul, then crossed the Middle East – touching Jewish hand‑embroidery in Jerusalem’s Old City, learning Bedouin weaving techniques under the desert stars of Riyadh, and losing herself in the geometric patterns of Fatimid art at Cairo’s Khan el‑Khalili market. She continued east: three months in the block‑printing workshops of Rajasthan, studying Tibetan carpet knots in the Kathmandu Valley, and absorbing the philosophy of “one lifetime, one color” at a Nishijin textile studio in Kyoto.
In early 2020, she arrived in Dali, Yunnan. The indigo‑and‑white world of Bai tie‑dye made her feel, for the first time, “This is the East I’ve been looking for.” Over the next two years, she traveled through Zhuang brocade villages in Guangxi, Miao embroidery valleys in Guizhou, and the foot of the Mogao Caves in Gansu. Everywhere she went, she filled sketchbooks with patterns, collected natural dye samples, and lived and worked alongside local artisans.
In the autumn of 2022, at Guozhuang by West Lake in Hangzhou, she met Xu Mingyuan, a fourth‑generation silk merchant from a family that had traded in Hangzhou silk for three generations. They talked for hours – about yarn counts, digital color deviation, the ancient Chinese text Tiangong Kaiwu, and Marco Polo. United by a shared vision, they decided: combine the finest Suzhou‑Hangzhou silk with Ludovica’s archive of global art motifs to create an international brand that lets Chinese silk “wear art.”
After two years of refinement, ModernScarf was born in spring 2024. Every scarf’s design comes from the pattern archive Ludovica collected during her travels, and is woven using the traditional “Hangluo” technique in Mr. Xu’s family workshop. The brand’s slogan, “Art You Can Wear,” is both a tribute to her grandmother and a promise to the world.
Today, Ludovica lives in Hangzhou, drawing inspiration from villages in southwest China in her studio – a renovated old factory building by the canal. Mr. Xu oversees supply chain and quality control. They are not married; they joke, “We married silk instead.”
“Every scarf tells a story of wanderlust and craftsmanship.”
— Ludovica de' Medici
Discover the collection → Shop ModernScarf
